The Problem of Faust

The striving modern human in Goethe's drama, read by Steiner as a soul torn between earth and spirit who wins knowledge only through error and effort.

The wedding of striving Faust to Greek Helena in Goethe's drama, which Steiner read as the modern soul reaching back to marry the lost beauty of antiquity.

Goethe's "two souls dwell in my breast": one soul holding to earth through the will, one reaching for spirit through thought, in the one divided modern human.

The young Margarete of Goethe's Faust, the soul of innocent love whom Steiner read as the human heart, ruined by desire yet redeemed.

Helen of Troy as she rises in Faust Part Two: the beauty of ancient Greece called back into the modern soul, and the danger of that backward longing.

The bodiless, clairvoyant being of Goethe's Faust whom Steiner read as a spirit seeking the long road to incarnation through the elements.

Goethe's tempter in Faust, whom Steiner read as two adversary spirits, Ahriman and Lucifer, hidden inside one negating figure.

The Greek myth-scene of Faust Part Two, read by Steiner as a panorama of Imaginations through which the soul revisits ancient nature.

The Erdgeist that Faust conjures and cannot endure: the weaving elemental spirit of the living, working earth.

Goethe's Ewig-Weibliche: the redemptive feminine that closes Faust by drawing the striving soul upward toward the spirit.

Sorge, the grey woman of Goethe's Faust, who breathes upon the aged Faust and blinds him; Steiner read her as the Ahrimanic power that darkens late-life sight.

In Goethe's Faust, the formless supersensible realm Faust descends into to summon Helena, read by Steiner as the archetypal ground of all becoming.

Faust's wager with the spirit of evil: he loses his soul only if a single passing moment ever satisfies him enough to wish it would stay.

Steiner's reading of Goethe's drama as a document of modern initiation, with Faust as the representative soul who must wrestle with Evil.

The opening scene of Goethe's Faust, where the Lord and Mephistopheles strike a wager over the striving soul, read by Steiner as the cosmic frame of the whole drama.

Steiner's reading of the drama's close, where Faust is saved not for being good but for never ceasing to strive.

The later half of Goethe's drama, which Steiner read as the soul's initiation-journey out through the wide world and the elements toward self-knowledge.

The Brocken witches' sabbath of Faust Part One, which Steiner read as a real out-of-body descent of Faust's soul into the sub-sensible world.

The Faust scene where a magic potion makes the old scholar young again and a mirror shows him the image of ideal beauty.

Faust's bookish assistant, whom Steiner reads as the dry intellect that lives on parchment and theory, sealed off from the living spirit of nature.